July 18th to 20th 2016, Vienna / AUSTRIA.

Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Creative Industries

Generative Systems & Design (Day #3)

Join experts from Industrial Light & Magic and the VFX industry, Creative Assembly and game studios for a day-long course on the applications of generative systems — from the technology to the design. Learn how you can use emergent algorithms and simulations to generate macro-level content, animate crowds in movies, or how you can use systemic design principles to bring your worlds to life!

Now in its 8th edition, nucl.ai brings together hundreds of developers from creative industries and interactive media to resolve the biggest technical and design problems with Artificial Intelligence. One of the event's tracks focuses specifically on“Generative Systems & Design”for an entire day.(Day #3: Wednesday, July 20th)

Regular & Current Attendees

Pixar Animation Studios

Square Enix

CD Projekt Red

Creative Assembly

Unity Technologies

INRIA Research Lab

MASA Group

Ubisoft Montreal

Moving Picture Company

Microsoft Game Studios

Bohemia Interactive

Epic Games

Iron Galaxy Studios

CCP Games

...

I've never seen so many industry figures, academics, and students happy to discuss a range of topics around AI in games. It was really, REALLY helpful.

Matthew Bedder

PhD Student

University of York, UK

It was great to return to #nuclai15 this year, I met loads of interesting people and came away buzzing with new ideas.

Vicky Smalley

CTO

Small Jelly, UK

It was my first time at #nuclai15 and I heard about it very late through co-workers. I was mostly interested in the Character Animation panels. I really hope to be able to attend every year from now on! Great information, great people, great time!

Laurent Delayen

Senior Gameplay Programmer

Epic Games, USA

For the first time in my life, I left a conference with concrete and crystallized plans to improve my current project based on the talks I attended and the conversations I had with people. Incredibly. Useful.

Sergey Mohov

Game Designer

Tequila Works, SPAIN

First time visiting a conference like this, and #nuclai15 made a very strong first impression. Great sessions, great people, great time!

Aaron Oostdijk

Lecturer & Researcher

University of the Arts Utrecht, NETHERLANDS

An invaluable resource of ideas and enthusiasm. Long may it continue.

Jim Brewster

Technical Lead

NaturalMotion, UK

Spent months of saving and talking to Alex on twitter – it was more than worth it. I cannot express how this experience changed me and might as well have shaped my future. From the networks I've created to the feedback needed to get back on track I am extremely happy for this opportunity and #nuclai16 is on my calendar.

Mohamed Serry

Gameplay Programmer

Creability, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

#nuclai15 was really unique and cross-discipline, bringing feature film, game AI, animation and machine learning people and talks together makes it the perfect opportunity to learn for everyone.

Attending conferences like Nucl.ai brings me in the perfect mental state. I always try to invent something crazy in the plane back home...

Simon Clavet

Animation & Physics Programmer

Ubisoft Montreal, CANADA

Wide variety of topics, great speakers, interesting conversations and lots of very very cool stuff to see and try - Nucl.ai easily beats other conferences!

Kevin Schmidt

Head of Data Science

Mind Candy, UK

#nuclai15 was again a wonderful opportunity to focus on game AI and the intersection of game design and programming. Great talks and great conversations.

Jurie Horneman

Independent, FRANCE

Making a world believable almost always requires bringing it to life. This track focuses on using generative systems to help create macro-level content by running simulations or emergent algorithms—and bring them under control with systemic designs. This includes digital extras and entire crowds that can interact with their environment, as well as games that can provide highly immersive and replayable experiences! Whether you're building technology for runtime or reusing tools as part of a creative process, you'll learn the tricks and techniques to help your scenes come to life and leverage the power of emergence and Artificial Intelligence.

Tickets!

Join developers from all over the world and secure your ticket for this year's nucl.ai now! Three days of artificial intelligence theory and practice packed into three parallel tracks per day with many networking opportunities are waiting for you in Vienna.

Conference* (3 Days)

All Content* (3 Days)

Single Day Ticket

Early Bird

A limited number of these tickets was available.

Sold Out.

Sold Out!

-

Early Worm

These tickets were available for a limited time.

Expired.

Sold Out.

-

Regular

Important: All Access sold out. All Content available instead.*

€ 369

€ 999

€ 399

Student Pass**

Available until Friday July 8th

60% off above

60% off above

60% off above

Indies or Unemployed Devs***

Available until Friday July 8th

20% off above

30% off above

20% off above

* All Access tickets give you access to all rooms on all days of the conference, Single Day tickets give you full access, but only on the day of your choice. With a main conference ticket you can access the amphitheatre and the open laboratories. See here for more details about ticket types and discounts.

Keynotes and Presentations

The track keynote looks into Crowd Simulation for Feature Film, in particular how this is implemented at Industrial Light & Magic. We'll hone in on some recent crowd work for BOND SPECTRE where we were tasked to assist recreating a vibrant Mexico City's Day Of The Dead for the films opening sequence.

Jo Plaete, Industrial Light & Magic

Jo Plaete is ILM London's Crowd Simulation Supervisor. Prior to joining ILM Jo has worked in the visual effects and feature animation industry for several years for companies like Framestore, Animal Logic and MPC on projects like World War Z, The Lone Ranger, 300, Guardians Of the Galaxy and most...

Jo Plaete, Industrial Light & Magic

Jo Plaete is ILM London's Crowd Simulation Supervisor. Prior to joining ILM Jo has worked in the visual effects and feature animation industry for several years for companies like Framestore, Animal Logic and MPC on projects like World War Z, The Lone Ranger, 300, Guardians Of the Galaxy and most...

Ubisoft's recently released title Far Cry Primal introduced 17 animal companions, many of which had unique abilities and play styles. This talk will describe the development process the team undertook from conception to design to implementation, to create what is now known as the Beast Master feature. Attendees will leave with an understanding of our team’s approach to multi-studio development, our battles with systemic vs. directed behaviours, and how we overcame struggles to achieve the dream of creating the ultimate "weapon".

Chris Seddon, Ubisoft Toronto

Chris Seddon is a Team Lead Programmer at Ubisoft Toronto focused on creating artificial intelligence that helps make games more realistic and fun to play. Chris joined the studio in 2013 as a Senior Gameplay Programmer creating intelligent companions and creatures for Far Cry 4 with Shangri-La and most recently...

Chris Seddon, Ubisoft Toronto

Chris Seddon is a Team Lead Programmer at Ubisoft Toronto focused on creating artificial intelligence that helps make games more realistic and fun to play. Chris joined the studio in 2013 as a Senior Gameplay Programmer creating intelligent companions and creatures for Far Cry 4 with Shangri-La and most recently...

In this talk I will present recent research from Trinity College Dublin and Disney Research on variety in crowd animation. I’ll talk about the way in which people perceive human bodies, motions and behaviors, and how best to reuse resources (e.g., models, mocap data, audio…) in such a way as to maximize the impression of a heterogeneous crowd of people. The talk will also explore how best to evaluate the realism of the resulting crowd simulations, both quantitatively and qualitatively (e.g., through perceptual experiments).

Carol O'Sullivan, Trinity College Dublin

Carol O’Sullivan is the Professor of Visual Computing at Trinity College Dublin, where she has been on the faculty since 1997. From 2013-2016 she was a Senior Research Scientist with Disney Research Los Angeles, and also spent time in the Movement Research Lab in Seoul National University as a Visiting...

Carol O'Sullivan, Trinity College Dublin

Carol O’Sullivan is the Professor of Visual Computing at Trinity College Dublin, where she has been on the faculty since 1997. From 2013-2016 she was a Senior Research Scientist with Disney Research Los Angeles, and also spent time in the Movement Research Lab in Seoul National University as a Visiting...

History has shown that players keep playing balanced games as balanced games continue to challenge players to try different strategies, because none are dominant. Automated game balancing is the next level of game balancing. In the 21st century with numerous games hitting the market, using automated game balancing can make a game stand out of the crowd. Ludible developed this technique that gives the game designer control over all game values by only having to think in terms of game constraints, like: “You should be able to reach the age of 60 even by making the most unhealthy choices”, rather than “The value of ‘x’ should be 1.2 instead of 1.1”. In this talk I will show how automated game balancing works and how to let the game logic work as it was intended by the game designer, even though the game constraints can be subject to change. I will speak in detail about the AI players, simulation techniques and of course the dynamic balancing algorithm.

Johan van der Beek, Ludible

Johan graduated in AI in 2007 after creating cooperative squad behavior in Killzone 2 for Guerrilla Games. He left the gaming industry to focus on creating and implementing smart parsers, AI systems and algorithms for several non-game projects. In 2011 it was time to move these techniques into the gaming...

Johan van der Beek, Ludible

Johan graduated in AI in 2007 after creating cooperative squad behavior in Killzone 2 for Guerrilla Games. He left the gaming industry to focus on creating and implementing smart parsers, AI systems and algorithms for several non-game projects. In 2011 it was time to move these techniques into the gaming...

Wisdom gathered from our attempts at using learning and AI to help out in production, with a focus on passing the responsibility of automated testing to an AI. What worked (and what didn't) in trying to alleviate QA workload and get better feature coverage.

Radu Danciu, Sprocket, Inc.

A videogame programmer with over 8 years of experience and a passion for AI and tools, having worked on IPs in the Hitman and Tom Clancy universes. Currently acting as manager and lead programmer of Sprocket, Inc. - a small games and middleware development studio founded in 2014, located in...

Radu Danciu, Sprocket, Inc.

A videogame programmer with over 8 years of experience and a passion for AI and tools, having worked on IPs in the Hitman and Tom Clancy universes. Currently acting as manager and lead programmer of Sprocket, Inc. - a small games and middleware development studio founded in 2014, located in...

In this talk, I will present the results of, and lessons learned on the development of intelligent tools to support designers in their creative design process. Through the lense of four case studies, you'll learn about strengths and weaknesses of automated tools and human designers, and how they can complement each other. In addition to discussing the results and insights from this project, I will also briefly outline how we plan to address remaining and new challenges in a new applied research project, called Live Game Design.

Anders Bouwer, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Anders holds an MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence (cum laude) from the VU Amsterdam, a Master's by Research in AI and Education from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Amsterdam. He has worked as a lecturer, programmer, and researcher for the Human-Computer...

Anders Bouwer, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Anders holds an MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence (cum laude) from the VU Amsterdam, a Master's by Research in AI and Education from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Amsterdam. He has worked as a lecturer, programmer, and researcher for the Human-Computer...

Alien Isolation relies on systemic AI to deliver tension and scares. We look at the processes, techniques and decisions involved in delivering a systemic experience that would traditionally be scripted.

Andy Bray, Creative Assembly

Andy started his career at Loughborough University, having achieved a first class degree in Science there. Starting work as a researcher at Loughborough, he then moved on to become a lecturer in programming and AI. Following his time with the university, Andy then embarked on his career within the games...

Andy Bray, Creative Assembly

Andy started his career at Loughborough University, having achieved a first class degree in Science there. Starting work as a researcher at Loughborough, he then moved on to become a lecturer in programming and AI. Following his time with the university, Andy then embarked on his career within the games...

Michaël Rouillé, Golaem

Michaël Rouillé is the CTO of Golaem, a company he co-founded in 2009. Golaem develop Golaem Crowd, a character animation software for artists of vfx, animation & game studios who need to populate backgrounds & midgrounds of films, tv series, commercials and video games. Michaël defines himself as a programmer,...

Michaël Rouillé, Golaem

Michaël Rouillé is the CTO of Golaem, a company he co-founded in 2009. Golaem develop Golaem Crowd, a character animation software for artists of vfx, animation & game studios who need to populate backgrounds & midgrounds of films, tv series, commercials and video games. Michaël defines himself as a programmer,...

Michaël Rouillé, Golaem

Michaël Rouillé is the CTO of Golaem, a company he co-founded in 2009. Golaem develop Golaem Crowd, a character animation software for artists of vfx, animation & game studios who need to populate backgrounds & midgrounds of films, tv series, commercials and video games. Michaël defines himself as a programmer,...

Michaël Rouillé, Golaem

Michaël Rouillé is the CTO of Golaem, a company he co-founded in 2009. Golaem develop Golaem Crowd, a character animation software for artists of vfx, animation & game studios who need to populate backgrounds & midgrounds of films, tv series, commercials and video games. Michaël defines himself as a programmer,...

Speakers & Organizers

Jo Plaete

Chris Seddon

Carol O'Sullivan

Johan van der Beek

Radu Danciu

Radu Danciu

A videogame programmer with over 8 years of experience and a passion for AI and tools, having worked on IPs in the Hitman and Tom Clancy universes. Currently acting as manager and lead programmer of Sprocket, Inc. - a small games and middleware development studio founded in 2014, located in Iasi, Romania; previous employers include Ubisoft, Io-Interactive and Microsoft Game Studios.

Johan van der Beek

Johan graduated in AI in 2007 after creating cooperative squad behavior in Killzone 2 for Guerrilla Games. He left the gaming industry to focus on creating and implementing smart parsers, AI systems and algorithms for several non-game projects. In 2011 it was time to move these techniques into the gaming industry. Via game design studies and working as a (serious) game designer in simulation and game studios, he now balances and calculates game models using AI and simulation techniques at Ludible - Automated Game Balancing as a freelancer.

Carol O'Sullivan

Carol O’Sullivan is the Professor of Visual Computing at Trinity College Dublin, where she has been on the faculty since 1997. From 2013-2016 she was a Senior Research Scientist with Disney Research Los Angeles, and also spent time in the Movement Research Lab in Seoul National University as a Visiting Professor from 2012-2013. Her research interests include perception, animation, virtual humans, and crowds. She was the co-Editor in Chief of the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, and was formerly Associate EIC of IEEE CG&A. She has served on many editorial boards and program committees, including the SIGGRAPH and Eurographics papers committees, and has been program or general chair for several conferences, e.g., Eurographics, ACM Symposium on Computer Animation, ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, and others.

Chris Seddon

Chris Seddon is a Team Lead Programmer at Ubisoft Toronto focused on creating artificial intelligence that helps make games more realistic and fun to play. Chris joined the studio in 2013 as a Senior Gameplay Programmer creating intelligent companions and creatures for Far Cry 4 with Shangri-La and most recently on Far Cry Primal with the fan-favourite Beast Master feature. Prior to joining Ubisoft, Chris started his career programming GPS tracking tools for an agricultural software company. Making games since the age of 15, Chris made the decision to follow his passion, joining the video game industry where he worked on multiple award-winning video games including Bioshock 2, The Darkness 2, Star Trek, FIFA Soccer, Tiger Woods 2006 and 2007, Madden 2008 and NCAA 2008. Chris is a computer programming graduate of Seneca College in Toronto.

Jo Plaete

Jo Plaete is ILM London's Crowd Simulation Supervisor. Prior to joining ILM Jo has worked in the visual effects and feature animation industry for several years for companies like Framestore, Animal Logic and MPC on projects like World War Z, The Lone Ranger, 300, Guardians Of the Galaxy and most recently Bond SPECTRE and Star Wars: Episode VII. Coming from a computer science, media and animation background Jo has always been passionate about crowd simulation and procedural ways of animating.

Anders Bouwer

Andy Bray

Michaël Rouillé

Petra Champandard-Pail

Petra Champandard-Pail

Petra has a background in business management, and worked as an International Area Manager for a large multi-million dollar corporation. She eventually moved on and joined Alex as the co-founder of AiGameDev.com. Petra is the creative force in the team, and takes care of business!

Michaël Rouillé

Michaël Rouillé is the CTO of Golaem, a company he co-founded in 2009. Golaem develop Golaem Crowd, a character animation software for artists of vfx, animation & game studios who need to populate backgrounds & midgrounds of films, tv series, commercials and video games. Michaël defines himself as a programmer, an art he has been trying to master for the last 25 years. First as a hobby making Z80 assembly demos in mid-schools, C games in high-school and C++ 3D game engines in university. Then as a profession, developing the kernel and the 3D visualization of a distributed simulation platform at Inria; designing and developing a real-time 3D visualization engine for civil and military simulators at Thales Training and Simulation; designing and developing a human behaviors modeling language, authoring tool and execution engine for virtual humans at Inria; founding Golaem and developing artist-friendly tools to animate digital characters. Apart from 3D, Michaël's professional interests include AI, animation and game engines. Michaël's personal interests lie in visual arts, he has been to art school, and love to torture himself with how to bridge between the programming & art worlds.

Andy Bray

Andy started his career at Loughborough University, having achieved a first class degree in Science there. Starting work as a researcher at Loughborough, he then moved on to become a lecturer in programming and AI. Following his time with the university, Andy then embarked on his career within the games industry, since accruing almost 20 years of experience to date. Andy joined Creative Assembly in 2003, where he now resides as Lead AI/Gameplay Programmer. Andy’s work at the studio encompasses titles including Alien: Isolation, Viking: Battle for Asgard and Spartan: Total Warrior, as well as work on the Total War series.

Anders Bouwer

Anders holds an MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence (cum laude) from the VU Amsterdam, a Master's by Research in AI and Education from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Amsterdam. He has worked as a lecturer, programmer, and researcher for the Human-Computer Studies lab and the Intelligent Systems Lab at the University of Amsterdam, and the Music Computing Lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK). He is currently affiliated with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, where he does research on Automated Game Design and teaches several courses on AI, Mobile Development and Game Technology. His research interests include artificial intelligence, human cognition, intelligent learning environments, intelligent multimedia, music interaction, mobile multimodal interaction, procedural content generation, and automated game design.